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One of the cruelties of political life is that most careers end in death, defeat or dishonour. Dalton McGuinty’s bold leap on Monday night was his attempt to escape that curse. It’s not clear that he will succeed.

One has to go back six premiers to the days of Bill Davis to find an Ontario premier who left with a gold watch rather than a swift kick from voters — or the imminent fear of one.

It was that fear of defeat that drove this premier’s decision: possible defeat over his next budget, certain defeats on major initiatives in the House, and increasingly likely defeat at the next general election. It was clearly the bile of defeat in Kitchener-Waterloo that triggered his decision to make this early departure. That humiliation at the hands of teachers and the NDP offered a foretaste of the year ahead.

His decision to prorogue flirts with a dishonourable end to an impressive political career. At a time when the province needs stable, resolute leadership to help it through another difficult economic winter, it will be run by bureaucrats, each carefully avoiding any decisions likely to cause irritation to an unknown new master. A recall of the legislature will be his successor’s decision. Unless the Liberals hold a leadership convention in February we will not see an Ontario budget until late in the spring — with the province on autopilot for nearly six months.

Dalton McGuinty was always a conundrum, even to those who knew him well: very private, almost shy yet a happy campaigner; always polite and less vain than the political norm, but furiously partisan and jealous of pretenders around him; good at external political partnerships from Jean Charest to Alison Redford, a disaster at reaching across the legislature; a devoted egalitarian and feminist whose inner circle was almost always entirely male; a policy wonk who trained hard to lose his nerdiness but only occasionally succeeded in becoming an adequate speaker; a man capable of courageous decisions and one who frequently kicked the tough policy cans down the road. This departure reflects that duality. Crassly political in shutting down the two biggest scandals to rock his nine years in power, yet framed in a gracious deferral to the party’s need for renewal.

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Nearly every premier since Leslie Frost has flirted with 24 Sussex. A couple even came close to saying yes. McGuinty should consider that each of his wise predecessors all said no to the eager placemen around them.

Departing leaders and their loyalists quickly move to paint broad strokes of the legacy portrait on days like this. They will point to his success in healing many of the gaping wounds left by the Harris years. They will count his successes in the environment — an end, sometime we hope, to the use of coal to generate power, the award-winning Greenbelt around the GTA, to all-day kindergarten, and to his vision for the Ring of Fire development of Northern Ontario.

It is not only hard-edged partisans who will also point to the enormous and still rising provincial debt, to his failure to tackle the structural foundation of Ontario’s ongoing deficit, to the reigniting of conflict with Ontario teachers, with the rest of the Ontario public sector likely soon to follow. That he departs hounded by the very same angry teachers whose rage at the Harris government helped elect him, is another irony of the McGuinty legacy.

But it is the smell over the handling of the air ambulance mess, followed by the curiously incompetent efforts to conceal the costs of their election-panicked power plant closures, that present the greatest risk to his legacy, to his attempt to escape the curse of a political career abruptly terminated by dishonour. Another cliché of political life is that it is never the deed but the coverup that kills you.

The fingerprints of those in government who knew and did nothing to stop ORNGE air ambulance patients being put at risk will emerge. The truth behind the government’s vacillation and prevarication about generating power in upper-middle class suburbs will also soon out. His adoption of one of the less salubrious tricks from the Stephen Harper political playbook — prorogation — will have bought him some time, but not much.

His nine years in office are marked by significant achievement. It’s sad that he chose to go in this manner as these shadows now darken that legacy. And legacies are forever.

Robin Sears is a principal at the Earnscliffe Strategy Group, and served as chief of staff to Bob Rae and as National Director of the NDP.

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